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Survey: Majority of US Millennials planning to buy a home, but are waiting until after 2018

A significant amount of Millennials currently renting apartments in US want to take the plunge into home ownership, but few are planning to do so anytime soon. According to the Apartment List Renter Confidence Survey, 53 percent of renters aged 18 to 34 who expect to buy a home are planning to make the big purchase after 2018. Only 25 percent expect to do so in the next two years.

Currently, homeownership for Americans under 35 years old is at its lowest point ever based on Census data dating going back to 1984. And the median price for a home in the US also recently reached an all-time high in June.

“Millennials are projected to be larger than the Boomer generation this year, and currently only 34.6 percent of Americans under age 35 are homeowners,” says Andrew Woo, Data Scientist at Apartment List.

“The future housing decisions of millennials will have a major impact on the economy. While millennial homeownership rates are low today, our study found that nearly 3 out of 4 millennial renters (74 percent) plan to buy a home in the future. ”

Age, marital status and location factor heavily into the decision. Those aged 25 to 34-years old were more likely to have plans to purchase a property sooner: 54 percent said they plan to buy within the next 3 years. The married component of this specific demographic is even more likely to aspire to home ownership in the near future: 58 percent expect to buy within the next three years, compared to just 30 percent of younger, unmarried Millennials.

The city the renters lived in also played a big part in the percentage of Millennials hoping to transition from renting to home ownership. The metropolitan areas that saw the highest amount of home ownership hopefuls were Cincinnati (85 percent), Austin (82 percent) and Denver (81 percent).

The survey is based on 18,682 renters across the United States of which 5,844 self-identified as being age 18 to 34-years old. Renters were asked about their homeownership plans and responded whether they were expecting to always rent, eventually buy a house or apartment, or were unsure about their plans.